


a gentleman never could

by oonaseckar



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Scientists, Arthur Ketch Being an Asshole, Arthur Ketch Needs a Hug, F/M, Gen, Men of Letters Bunker (Supernatural), Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Threesome - F/F/M, Vampires, gentlemen of letters, mff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:22:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27311122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oonaseckar/pseuds/oonaseckar
Summary: Ketch is dying: Professor Mary Winchester, and local vampire seethe empress Rowena MacLeod, set about to put that right.
Relationships: Arthur Ketch/Mary Winchester, Arthur Ketch/Rowena MacLeod





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Work title is Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.
> 
> Alternate universe: supernatural manifestations exist, mostly offscreen, but characters have made different life choices and deal with them in different ways.

_Bloody_ Winchesters. 

That's most of what I want to say. You could sum it up in those two words, really.

Money and survival, these are the key things. For us, for them, for everyone. I'm just having trouble working out who's us, and who's them, any more.

My name is Arthur Ketch, and I used to be one of you, and in a way I still am. That is, although converted in a fashion, I haven't gone over to _their_ side. That's because I wasn't converted by _them_. I was converted by, well, us.

Oh, I'll be less obtuse, shall I? Your maker, as a vampire: there are certain expectations, are there not? We have been educated by popular culture into a certain list of assumptions. When you enter the realms of the undead, you are guided into it, inducted, by someone who's already a member of the club, so the lore goes. This person has specially selected you, honoured you: because it's by no means a certainty, a sure thing. Not at all. Half the time you could be just a quick snack, a delicious injection of iron and pre-digested vitamins and nutrient correlates. You're lucky. You're special.

And when you become one of the lords of the night, the princes of darkness, then the secrets of immortality and untold supernatural powers are unveiled to you. And you are one of them, you feed, you abandon weak human morality and you _rule_.

Ahem. The rules have changed. Someone should alert the film-makers at this point.

Vampires are an infestation, a parasitical organism that the human race has adapted to and accommodated for thousands of years now. This was always occult knowledge: but in recent decades, it has been whispered louder, dealt with more officially, and eventually made (very quietly dealt with, in hard-to-request leaflets with small print) a matter of public policy and semi-common knowledge.

They've never been a _commensal_ organism on the body of the human race. As a scientific researcher –- a former scientific researcher, perhaps –- I can fairly reliably asseverate that. But on the other hand, neither are rats or cockroaches: and yet we've come to our separate territorial unspoken agreements with them. As we had, with the larger, more sinister encroacher.


	2. I am a gentleman, I keep my word

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is Alexander Dumas.

In recent years, raw data and scholarly studies suggest that the never-benign marauder has become less so. More death. More turning. A vicious holding of existing territory, and landgrabs for more. Certain governments, some agencies, ministers, international coalitions and alliances: these decided something had to be done: some action taken, however covert.

I am one of the results of that. I am a vampire, not by vampire made. A _lab construct_ , I am: with my old human self as the raw material, they followed arcane procedures, as viewed through a microscope. Analysis of ancient texts, consideration of popular myth, careful examination of select, and carefully selected lab samples, often obtained and extracted at great human cost. All those resulted in... well, initially in numerous failed attempts, on test subjects who were _not me._

They had no shortage of volunteers. If you're sick unto death, and you're offered enrolment onto a program that will give you eternal life, do you think you'd turn it down? (Actually a percentage of people do turn it down, as we found out. Quite a small one, but still.) Yes. I was one of the lab workers on the program. The original program, at that. But not the covert ones. I wasn't in on _those_. No doubt I was assessed, and rejected as a collaborator: appraised as being too likely to express misgivings. To squeal, to stand and argue, to _kick up a fuss._

So I know the outcomes, the procedures, the rigour of the study quite intimately. I can give you chapter and verse. I can speak for the potential subjects who turned down the once in a lifetime, once in a deathtime opportunity. I was one of them.

I was –- perhaps –- as far as I know –- the first conscript. The first unwilling subject.


	3. Chapter 3

They _made_ me a vampire, my human colleagues. Against my will, with my fingers grasping onto them, pleading for mercy, pleading for a natural human death and some dignity. A _little_ dignity. Some of them were my friends as well as co-workers, to a degree at least. I don't think they would have done it, if I hadn't been terminally ill, and that common knowledge.

I don't think they would have done it, if she hadn't ordered them to. Mary, _my_ Mary, Professor Winchester: the renowned, the beautiful, the brilliant.

I don't think they would have done it, if we hadn't been lovers.


	4. Chapter 4

I meet my lover, my ex, my enemy and colleague, down in her rathole little office in the basement of the hospital block. Her level, her status is such that she could choose her quarters, name her staff requirements and her lab specifications. But she likes her anonymity, her pretended unassuming academic air. Most especially her scholarly identity, when in fact, her foremost label is that of a member of the nation's security elite. But it's not how she thinks of herself: not how she likes others to think of her.

Certainly she cultivated a harmless and slightly bewildered air, right up to the time I first found myself in bed with her.

I had respect for her then, even after we'd shared bodily fluids. I would never have believed what she proved to be capable of. Whatever her motivation, it had been an ethical breach that... Ah, what use is there in rehashing it all continually.

We are colleagues, now, and that's all. Frosty colleagues, at that. She knows better than to try any warmer approach. And we have work to be done, that outweighs any grudges, any wounds between us.

'Mary.' I nod at her and stash my briefcase on the desk in front of her, rifling through it quickly and retrieving my phone, accessing my diary and itinerary. 'You wanted to know when I intended to make contact with all members and an outline of intel at this point.'

I get a glower, and a sigh. She's still not given up on trying to warm me up, worm her way back into favour: she thinks what she did was forgivable.

No. Understandable, perhaps. Not forgivable. Rape is rape, and it might as well have been.


	5. Chapter 5

I haven't gone over. I'm still onside. I just wish it weren't _her_ side.

She taps into her keyboard, pulls up files and nods at me. "Okay then. Give me the data."

I sit on the edge of the chair and outline it. "Four main nests: one more than we thought. Two de-politicised, co-existing without further ambitions. One making more than they need for carrying on the line, feeding excessively, killing both while feeding and without feeding: dangerous, need taking out, but not part of a larger network. The fourth is the one we hadn't identified till now."

She finishes typing, turns and raises an eyebrow at me.

I confirm her unspoken inquiry. "They're part of the network, and they're mobilizing. A threat that requires immediate attention."

Mary pulls off her tortoiseshell spectacles, and chews at a tip. She is beautiful, did I mention? Golden blond, perfectly modelled, green-eyed: all of it masked as well as she can manage by a studious air and a professor's garb. It's not useful in her role. I think sometimes she'd actually prefer to dispense with it, sink herself in the job more thoroughly without the hindrance of continuous sexual attention.

Of course it did bag her _me_ , till she shot herself in the foot.

"Have you made contact?" she asks. Dark green eyes examine me thoroughly, a little too intense. Mary has no poker hand. No wonder she's not a field agent: anymore.


End file.
